On Monday (July 29) the leader of the conservative opposition Union fraction (made up of CDU and CSU parties) in the German Parliament, Thorsten Frei, said that his party would be “open” to the idea of sending back asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan who are found to have committed crimes.
Frei told the German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that “cases should be assessed on an individual basis.” And that the German authorities should work out whether an individual was really deserving of their protection status, or whether or not it might be safe to send certain individuals back to their countries of origin, reported the Catholic news agency KNA.
Last week, a high court in Münster reached the decision that the protection status for one Syrian man, who had been convicted of a crime in Austria, could be revoked as it would be safe to send him back to his home area in Syria.
Court decision not yet binding
Although the decision of the court is not yet binding, and can still be appealed, it has worried many in the Syrian community, as well as human rights organizations, who feel that this could be the start of a more general trend to sending refugees and asylum seekers back.
Until now, the majority of those coming from Syria have received asylum status in Germany, due to the ongoing conflict in the country, and the fears of many who arrive of being persecuted if they were to be returned.
However, the Münster court ruled that there was not such a generalized threat in Syria for civilians and so each case could be assessed individually. The judge said that in the province where the claimant came from, Hasaka, there was still some armed conflict and clashes between the Kurdish rulers and representatives of the Islamic State terror group, but that civilians did not face such a generalized threat as they had in the past.
Talking with the Taliban?
Once the court decision was published, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, from the ruling Social Democratic party (SPD) said that the government was working hard on how it might be possible to send people back to Syria and Afghanistan in the future.
At the weekend, the German tabloid Bild quoted German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, also from the SPD party, saying that the German government was talking confidentially to parties in both countries to see how returns could be initiated. Normally, for a country to make returns, they need a diplomatic presence in the country and to be talking to the governments or regimes that rule the countries. This is not presently the case officially with either Afghanistan, since the Taliban took power in 2021, or Syria.
However, quoting the Bild article, the British right-wing Daily Telegraph paper claimed that Germany “was talking to the Taliban” in order to make that possible. This is not the first time that these kinds of talks have been reported.
In June, following two fatal knife attacks carried out by migrants in Germany, some opposition politicians, including Brandenburg’s CDU Interior Minister Michael Stübgen were urging the German government to begin talks with the Taliban, instead of just continuing to broker relations via neighboring countries like Pakistan, where Germany does have a diplomatic presence, reported the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
EU countries also pushing for more returns
The Liberal FDP party, also in the ruling coalition, stated last week via the Rheinische Post that they also believed that neither Syria or Afghanistan should be classified as representing a “general threat” to civilians since the security situation in the country had “stabilized.”
The FDP’s General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai said he believed that “returns should become policy once again soon.”
Politicians in some other EU countries, including Italy, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Slovenia and Slovakia, have also been pushing in recent months for an ending of the diplomatic “cold war” with Syria, reported the German press agency dpa. However, the German Foreign Ministry is reported to regard this view with “skepticism.”
EU commissioner ‘reticent’ about changing course on Syria
A spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry told journalists in Berlin on Monday that although it was always good to keep abreast of the situation and be ready to change course, the Syrian regime under Baschar al-Assad, was still reportedly carrying out the “most serious human rights abuses against its own population, and so long as that was the case, Germany would find it hard to allow a ‘normalization’ of its relationship with the Syrian regime.”
The EU Commission’s equivalent of a Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell also expressed reservations about increasing contact with Syria. According to dpa, Borrell was “reticent” but advised a certain “pragmatism” in negotiations with Syria, without losing sight of the rights of the Syrian people, and also without losing sight that the current Syrian regime has “close ties to Russia and Iran.”
Italy has declared itself ready to send diplomats back to Syria. At the moment, the German government has talked in terms of allowing for returns for the most serious of criminals to both Afghanistan and Syria, but via neighboring countries and their diplomatic missions. No concrete details have yet been outlined.
Arguments against deportation
Pro Asyl, a German organization that speaks up for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers around Europe, states on its website that Germany grants 70 percent of those who ask for asylum protection.
Pro Asyl says this percentage is at “record height” and demonstrates that “the majority of those who arrive in Germany to seek protection have very good reasons for seeking that protection.”
For that reason, states Pro Asyl, politicians should be looking more at how to integrate these people and get them working, not on how to send some of them back to their home countries.
They say when politicians call for more deportations, they are just bending to “increasing currents of populism.”
